BGS honours Lynn Morris

The Lynn Morris Band: (l-r) Tad Marks, Jesse Brock,
Marshall Wilborn, Lynn Morris, Chris Jones

Two years ago the Bluegrass Situation (BGS) online magazine published Claire Levine's article 'Lynn Morris: the national banjo champion who couldn't get an audition'. To mark the start of Women's History Month, the BGS staff have now published a further feature as #6 in their 'BGS Top 50 Moments' series, drawing attention to the earlier article and stating:

What sets this profile apart from the thousands of other features we’ve published is that it had some of the highest engagement we’ve ever seen on the site. Even now, nearly twenty years after her retirement, Lynn’s legacy continues to ripple through our community in big ways.

The Wikipedia article on Lynn Morris is short and incomplete, and the biographical article on her for the Bluegrass Music Hall Of Fame (into which she was inducted last year) is not yet online, so Claire Levine's article (with two YouTube videos) is a good brief introduction to Lynn's career. A 1999 Bluegrass Unlimited article by Geoffrey Himes, 'Lynn Morris: she will be the light' can be read in the BU archives.

Both BGS features refer the reader to Murphy Hicks Henry's Pretty good for a girl: women in bluegrass (2013) for further details. Long-service bluegrass fans in Ireland will note that at least four of the five musicians shown in the photo above have played over here at one time or another, and while in Ireland Lynn learned the song 'You'll never be the sun' from a recording by Dolores Keane.

© Richard Hawkins